Last Thursday, the Melbourne-based company announced a 50:50 joint venture with Dallas-based Foree International to explore a region covering 250,000 hectares in the country.

Then yesterday, Molopo said it had signed an agreement to acquire Foree’s interest in the project, in exchange for $US200,000 cash and $200,000 worth of its shares.

In addition, Molopo has agreed to pay Foree a further $50,000 worth of cash and shares if the JV is granted exploration rights over an additional 125,000ha currently under application.

Molopo’s South African exploration program involves examining areas that have flowed gas from mineral exploration boreholes in the Free State gold fields, south of Welkom, and in the Evander gold field, southeast of Johannesburg.

A Molopo team is currently in South Africa finalising arrangements to begin work programs in each of the areas.

The program will start with soil-gas geochemical sampling and analysis, coupled with a magnetometer survey, with the intention of identifying gas-prone trends for drilling.